"HE PUT THE CANDLE DOWN AND DROPPED UPON THE SETTEE" "Poor lad! poor lad!" he said, brokenly, "and his poor mother—she was the sweetest creature. I had looked forward to seeing her again with so great happiness, and I already loved her boy." "He was worthy to be loved," answered Archy, feeling a great sob rising in his throat. "He was the manliest fellow—" Then there was a long silence. How strange it all was! Archy, who had lived the quietest and most prosaic of boyhoods in an American clearing on the Chesapeake Bay, seemed, from the day of his father's death, to have fallen into an odd, new world, and sometimes the strangeness of it all staggered him. The silence continued. Colonel Baskerville, leaning his head on his hands, seemed quite overcome by the terrible news that Archy had given him. "It will be a dreadful shock and grief to my brother," he said, after a while. "If he had known dear Langton as I did, his grief would be greater. When I was first [Pg 39]captured, it was not very comfortable for me in the gun-room of the Seahorse. You know, sir, the extreme prejudice of your naval service to Commodore Paul Jones—and the fact that I had served with him was against me, although I protest I think it the greatest honor in the world to serve under that great man. I did not let the midshipmen have it all their own way"—here the ghost of a smile came to Archy's face—"but Langton stood my friend, and I never loved any companion I ever had half so well. Perhaps, sir, after all, blood is thicker than water." [Pg 39] "All that you tell me makes me grieve for him the more. Lord Bellingham, though, has a special disappointment in his death, for you, with your youth and inexperience, can scarcely understand the overwhelming desire a man like Lord Bellingham feels to transmit his title and estates to his descendants; and he has none, except you—and I foresee he would have a hard task to make you adapt yourself to his views." "Poor old Lord Bellingham!" "Poor, indeed, he is, in spite of his rank and estates. I have drawn no nattering portrait of him—but, like other men, he has his good points. He is a bundle of contrariety. He is generous and cruel. He is profuse and parsimonious. He[Pg 40] lives in two rooms in luxury, and shuts up the rest of the castle. His unkindness drove his
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